LinkedIn Unveils The Top Skills That Can Get You Hired In 2017, Offers Free Courses for a Week

October 20, 2016

According to our data, job applications spike on LinkedIn in October. So chances are you or someone you know is thinking about landing a new gig. That’s why today, we’re revealing the Top Skills of 2016 — our annual list of the skills employers need most in candidates.

We break it down globally and in 14 countries (click through the SlideShare below to view the Top Skills of 2016 across all countries):

The Global Top Skills of 2016 list reveals several trends about the global job market:

Demand for marketers is slowing: While marketing skills like marketing campaign management, SEO/SEM, and channel marketing were in high demand in 2015, things have changed. This year, SEO/SEM dropped five spots from #4 to #9 and marketing campaign management dropped completely off the list. Demand for marketing skills is slowing because the supply of people with marketing skills has caught up with employers’ demand for people with marketing skills.

Data and cloud reign supreme: I smell a dynasty in the making! Cloud and distributed computing has remained in the #1 spot for the past two years and is the Top Skill on almost every list — including France, Germany, India, Ireland, Singapore, the U.S., and Spain. Following closely on its heels is statistical analysis and data mining, which came in #2 last year, and #1 in 2014. These skills are in such high demand because they’re at the cutting edge of technology. Employers need employees with cloud and distributed computing, statistical analysis and data mining skills to stay competitive.

Show me, don’t tell me: For the first time ever, data presentation, which is visualizing data, makes the list with the #8 spot. With statistical analysis and data mining holding strong again this year at #2, employers need employees who can organize data so it’s easy for people to understand.

User interface design is the new black: User interface design (#5), which is designing the part of products that people interact with, is increasingly in-demand among employers. It ranked #14 in 2014, #10 last year, and #5 this year (second largest jump on this year’s Global Top Skills of 2016 list). Data has become central to many products, which has created a need for people with user interface design skills who can make those products easy for customers to use.

If you have any of these skills, make sure you let employers know. A simple way to do this is by adding the skills to your LinkedIn profile. In addition to showcasing your professional brand, you’ll also show up higher in recruiters’ search results.

If you don’t have these skills, now is the perfect time to learn. Join us next week for the Week of Learning. It’s dedicated to helping you get a better job — whether you’re looking for a promotion, or searching for a new gig. LinkedIn Learning’s 5,000+ courses will be free, including the courses that can teach you the Top Skills of 2016.

There are thousands of skills that members can add to their profiles, so we grouped these skills into several dozen categories. For example, skills like “Android” and “iOS” would fit into the “Mobile Development” category. Then we looked at all of the hiring and recruiting activity that happened on LinkedIn between Jan. 1 and Sept. 1, equaling billions of data points, and identified the skill categories that belonged to members who were more likely to start new jobs and receive interest from recruiters. Skill categories that did not meet a specific threshold for membership were excluded from our analysis. The up and down arrows reflect changes in the skill rankings compared to last year’s list.